Semester Reflections

Semester 3

For my third semester, I have learned that we can help us understand the history or biases behind art through the way we look at things from personal experience. Over the course of the semester, I remember us having a discussion about what different artworks symbolize or bring conversation to. This was post-election so I think it made it more impactful, given the amount of discussion and bias around politics, I felt it gave increased honest opinions. By looking at the pictures it helped me understand the way we value things or view things with such bias with the experiences were given. How growing up in childhood may affect the way we look at an acrylic painting of a couple sleeping. Possibly even water scarcity experience with a stylistic water fountain we reviewed. This all engages our beliefs around certain art forms. As for learning different strategies that help us initiate the creative process. A good way to do that is to think big with crazy concepts or imaginative ideas. The creative process isn’t something you can turn on with a switch, so letting your imagination soar is a good way to start the process. An example of this would be playing Pictionary or creating stop-motion videos in class. It’s hard in the beginning to understand how you want to create works of art or perform something but in the end, you get to see the vision of what you created and obtain consistent creative momentum. Another thing I learned from this year's colloquium is the way we engage in feedback. Over the course, I have learned feedback in ways through surveys, 1-1 chats, and group discussions. Especially for me as a workshop leader, I got the chance to see how we can incorporate feedback through group discussions concerning my workshop idea. Small index cards of what students learned, or through surveys/ quizzes on elms to give me honest feedback. While also involving small discussions with previous workshop leaders who have already done it.

A couple pieces of art that have caught my attention is recently dealing with the situation of a Health insurance involving the CEO. From different social media platforms I have seen numerous fanarts of the person who committed the crime involving the health insurance CEO. What captured my attention the most was how they drew the masked individual showing him in a revolutionary way. Like a symbol of hope in a time when people may still seem to be coming to terms with the election still and all the policies that seem to be making its way into effect. I think art like this especially recently expresses people's values and opinions when it comes to living comfortably and seeing a small beacon of hope to fight back from being exploited. Which is why you can see in so many arts they paint him as a good person despite his actions. Overall, I think knowing the outside influence as to such artistic reasons and learning in art scholars the impact of personal experience it helped me understand it much better. A supporting art class that I have taken so far would be a literature class that focuses on books created by women or heavily involving female characters (CMLT275). This class has shown interesting connections to my time here as an art scholar to what I have learned about different social issues we may come across. Such like gender and sexuality the class helped me understand stigmas and stereotypes of women that negatively impact us as people while also appealing to what I learned in colloquium.

I believe my learning has improved by interacting with different art scholars by learning to be open-minded about different opinions surrounding art and heavy concepts we face in the real world. Everyone has a different way of interpreting certain scenarios so getting to know other people and opinions has helped me learn the importance of speaking your truth while also expanding yourself to listen instead of listening to respond even if it‘s not what you agree with. An example of this could be for us exploring social issues and how they may relate to different art forms. What we deem as culturally insensitive, not environmentally friendly, etc.

I feel like I have contributed to the art scholars program by getting involved with the Craft and Chats held around the semester. One of the small Craft and Chats I have done was for Next-Now Fest with TA and going to the student comedy show. It was a great experience that helped me feel more inclined to interact with different parts of UMD and venture out to try new things. I had never been to a comedy show before so it was a pretty great experience to explore the joy of improv. I wish I was able to leverage more AAB events they seemed pretty fun to go to after seeing the posted pictures from that day. So I’ll try to make more room in my schedule for next semester. 

I don't think that many people from the program challenged my beliefs. Sure there may have been a few disagreements regarding certain artworks but never anything rash I would assume. But even artistically I don’t think there was much difference in opinions we were pretty much on the same page. Which is something I find to be pretty nice knowing I have made friends from this program. I think there’s value in hearing different perspectives of yourself to see where you fall short on certain knowledge of topics and discussion. An example would be the peer feedback I had gotten from students. Hearing different perspectives of how well I taught the class and ways I could do better. It helps me realize some of my weak points to come back stronger and more concise.